How the American Forces Vietnam Network Died

 

For the one year anniversary of our book Hot Mics and TV Lights, lead author Marc Yablonka and I offer this full chapter on the final days of the AFVN legacy. It is available on Amazon in paperback or digital foremats

It’s 105 Degrees and the Temperature is Rising

            A popular Christmas song would go down as the last consequential music selection broadcast on AFVN’s FM radio station: Irving Berlin’s White Christmas.

            In spite of the war, many Americans have fond memories of Christmas in Vietnam. It was possible, maybe even likely, to have a merry Christmas. This depended on your job, your unit and location—and what the enemy might be planning. Most of us made the best of the situation.

            It was a nostalgic time we looked forward to. Moms back home boxed up homemade Christmas cookies; families mailed gifts and cards; USOs and Donut Dollies helped spread the holiday spirit; thousands laughed at Bob Hope’s Christmas shows; and enlisted men’s and officers’ clubs were decked out to simulate stateside traditions.

            Military chefs pitched in with special meals. For the most fortunate revelers, the menu rivaled what they would have enjoyed at home. I remember my Saigon mess hall even served eggnog.

            Like many units, AFVN’s main entrance was ornamented; a 1968 photo shows the lobby television flanked by two Christmas trees. They were artificial, but they were perfect! The record library had a selection of holiday music—including White Christmas—and our radio and TV programming provided an appropriate amount of holiday cheer. Hopefully, we didn’t make the guys in the field too homesick.

            But Irving Berlin never could have imagined how his White Christmas would be used decades later in Vietnam: as a foreboding anthem to evacuate the country. It was 1975 and the last AFVN radio station had been retired and transferred to the civilian staff of American Radio Service.

            “My last day in Vietnam was simply crazy,” recalled CBS News reporter Ed Bradley, in the book Tears Before the Rain: An Oral History of the Fall of South Vietnam. “On the morning of April 29, Armed Forces Radio was playing its usual Muzak. Then they interrupted the program to announce that ‘it’s a hundred and five degrees in Saigon and the temperature is rising.’ This was followed by the playing of Bing Crosby’s White Christmas. You’ve got to remember this was in late April.”

            Author Larry Engelmann’s book contains numerous mentions of the final-alert broadcast on the only remaining English-language radio station, and it corrects a couple of misconceptions. First, it was not Bing Crosby’s version of White Christmas, but the voice of Tennessee Ernie Ford. Second, the predetermined code to get out, was not really necessary for many listeners—most people already knew the enemy was advancing on South Vietnam’s capital.

            A full 24 hours before the momentous radio advisory, Saigon’s main Post Exchange was being looted. According to journalist Dirck Halstead of TIME/LIFE, who wrote in TheDigitalJournalist, “Vietnamese are smashing through the windows of the giant American PX and Commissary. As burglar alarms bray, they wheel off shopping carts filled with sugar, medicine and frozen pork chops . . ..”

            The radio warning to evacuate did, however, serve to make it official, but the signs were obvious that Saigon’s days were numbered. As Ed Bradley elaborated, “In fact, all you had to do to know the evacuation had started was to look out the hotel window. You saw Americans—round eyes—walking down the streets carrying suitcases.”

            Former Marine Douglas Potratz was Sergeant of the Guard at the U.S. Embassy compound when he heard the dreaded radio announcement that the temperature was 105 degrees and rising and the playing of White Christmas. “I was over by the security building, which was an old French villa by the gate,” Potratz said. “Everybody had radios and it was being played, I’d say about 11 o’clock or noontime.” Potratz heard the bulletin just once, but was told it was repeated every 15 minutes.

            That very day, April 29^th, 1975, the last two Americans killed in the conflict were Embassy Marines Darwin Judge and Charles McMahon. Their position was shelled at Tan Son Nhut airport.

            Decades later, Potratz was an attorney for the Fall of Saigon Marines Association when I interviewed him. “We had passed the word a little before White Christmas started playing that something was going to happen that day. We had not planned to have the embassy as the evacuation point; everything was supposed to happen at the DAO compound.” [Defense Attaché Office at Tan Son Nhut]

            One of the most complete accounts on the role of radio in the final evacuation came from Chuck Neil who was a civilian announcer for American Radio Service as the war ended. He had been working for private companies in South Vietnam, had done some announcing years earlier, and applied for an on-air position after AFVN passed the torch to ARS in 1973.

            “We had a regular format—news, sports, 24-hour day, 100,000-watts, FM radio,” according to Neil. He was hired as a news announcer but also did a couple of live DJ shows. He memorialized the tumultuous final days in Larry Engelmann’s book Tears Before the Rain and on Engelmann’s blog Pushing On.

            The idea of a radio alert was conceived by the Defense Attaché Office, according to Neil. “The public affairs officer at the DAO, Ann Bottorf—the late Ann Bottorf, the lady who was on the orphan airlift C5A and when the door opened the suction took her right out—she thought of it.”

            Neil attended a meeting with the security office at the U.S. Embassy to determine the precise message. “So, I said why not play a recording of something that every American will recognize in a split second . . . so why not play, “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas?”

            Ironically, White Christmas was first performed on the Kraft Music Hall radio program weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Bing Crosby’s version has been described as the most popular Christmas song in history. Soldiers requested it be played on Armed Forces Radio during World War II.

            Neil said he was thinking of Bing Crosby’s rendition, “but of all the thousands of records and tapes we had at the radio station, I couldn’t find Bing Crosby’s recording so I got Tennessee Ernie Ford’s.” Then, after the song, Neil would announce, “The temperature in Saigon is 105 degrees and rising.” Neil said that was the signal that the evacuation was on. “We recorded that and put in on a tape cartridge.”

            By April 28, Neil said there were a lot of heavy concussions and explosions, but that most of the Vietnamese staff had already gotten out, although some locals elected to stay on and help at the radio station. “We knew that Vietnam was going to fall, but we didn’t know it was going to be that quick.”

            Near the end, Neil said the remaining Vietnamese had brought whole families into the compound anticipating a sudden departure. “They were sleeping and living right there at the radio station. We must have had two hundred people in there. They [toilets] were overflowing and inoperable . . . and the place started to stink and it was awful.”

            Late in the morning of April 29 the DAO called Neil and ordered the remaining four Americans to evacuate. Without alarming the large crowd of Vietnamese, Neil, the Americans and maybe a half dozen Vietnamese engineers, got into the station’s van. “We had assured them (the engineers) that we would get them out,” Neil said.

            Neil went back inside for his last all-important task. “We had a big Gates Automatic Programmer . . . and I took the cart (cartridge recording) ‘105 degrees and rising,’ and also the ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,’ and popped it in the slot and punched it up. And that was my last official act at the radio station.”

            Neil, who tucked his .38 Colt Cobra into his waistband, explained how the van full of ARS broadcasters made its way to the Embassy—even bribing a South Vietnamese Army checkpoint with a carton of Salem cigarettes—and got safely past thousands of frantic Vietnamese clamoring to get in.

            Inside the walls, Neil described the recreation area where the swimming pool, restaurant and bar had become a holding section for well-behaved refugees. “The manager of the place was still there, but he just opened the refrigerators and some of the people were frying up steaks on the grill, and the liquor locker was open and hundreds of bottles were consumed until finally there was nothing left.”

            From inside the chancery building itself—where Neil saw Ambassador Martin in the hallway, and “beautiful handguns lying around all over the place, just left there”—he telephoned the radio station and told the Vietnamese to use the station’s two pick-up trucks to shuttle the remaining evacuees to Newport (terminal). “I understand they had a hell of a time, but they made it.”

            The ARS broadcaster’s account explains that he was one of the last Americans out, about one o’clock in the morning of April 30. Also leaving on the same helicopter from the embassy rooftop were four Vietnamese radio engineers. “I was disgusted with the whole thing, to be honest with you. I felt like we abandoned lot of people,” Neil concluded.

            Flying to the U.S.S. Hancock in the South China Sea, Neil said, “Long Binh was ablaze. Fires all over the place. I could see the lights of Vung Tau. I was sorry to leave so hurriedly.”

            The next day, aboard the aircraft carrier overcrowded with refugees, Neil made a haunting discovery: The radio station was still on the air. “I heard my voice on the radio say, ‘It’s twelve o’clock midnight in Saigon on American radio.’ ‘Jesus,’ we thought. We had a powerhouse there . . . and the generators must have still been operating.”